Author's Note:
This is the final part of The New Neighbors, the thrilling two part story about love, lizardmen, and teenagers WHO ARE ALL STILL EIGHTEEN. They didn't become not eighteen between story halves. Time travel is in the Concord stories.
*
In the anti-climax that defines many stories of the world, a text message full of amazingly explicit pictures of lizard cock could arrive on a girl's phone and produce absolutely no reaction in the girl in question. This wasn't because Fiona Miller was some jaded uber-whore who regularly got pictures of junk on her phone. Nor was this because pictures of lizard cock -- and lizard abs and lizard balls and glistening lizard cum -- were so utterly mundane that Fiona could glance at them and roll back to sleep.
No, the reason was far more mundane.
After a night of swimming naked in her pool to tease the new neighbors -- one of who had sent the pictures in question -- Fiona had slipped to her bed, laid down, and
buzzed
in place for the better part of an hour, her mind whirling and spinning around with excitement about what she had done. That hour had lead her to finally drifting off to sleep around three in the morning. So, when the pictures finally arrived -- creeping through the sluggish electronic switchbacks that made up the phone network in the area -- the phone buzzed with the alert that a new message had come on while Fiona was crawling through the depths of her deepest sleep.
She woke, groggily, mumbled something about pancakes, grabbed the phone, brought up the images of Marvin's cock, nodded, and mumbled something more about Darth Vader. Then she tabbed out of the image, turned her phone off, and slammed her head back into her pillow and was out like a light.
When she woke the next morning, the phone dutifully told her that there were no new messages -- and there weren't -- and she didn't remember a thing between getting to bed and waking up in the morning, sleepy and grumpy and thinking that romantic erotic gestures seemed a lot more fun at night, and not when an entire day of school work stretched out before her like a nightmarish series of horrifying trials and struggles.
"Bluuuuuuuugh," she mumbled.
Mother looked at Fiona primly, then shook her head, clucked her tongue, and said something about kids these days -- ignoring the fact that when she had been young, kids had been doing far harder drugs than what was popular in Fiona's age bracket.
Meanwhile, in the Springtail household, both Marvin and Trevor were both as quiet and subdued as their parents had ever seen them. Frank Springtail glanced at his wife, Sandra. Sandra glanced back, arching an eyebrow ridge as if to say 'they're your boys, I'm just their mother, what would I possibly know about this?'
Frank's brow furrowed as if to say 'I overrule you
once
and you never let me live it down?
Sandra shrugged one shoulder, sipping her coffee gingerly as if to say 'fine, I suppose I am being unfair. Want me to go first or shall you?'
Frank nodded ever so slightly, as if to say 'you, please.'
Sandra set her glass down, smiling at her children. "You two sleep okay last night?"
Both grunted.
"You need to get to bed if you're going to do well at school," Frank said, cheerily. "So, uh, is there anything wrong with the house? Or your bedrooms?"
"No, no, they're fine," Marvin said as Trevor muttered something that sounded distinctly similar to a curse word. Sandra frowned, her ear-holes twitching slightly as her frills lifted up slightly in irritation. But since she wasn't sure if Trevor had actually sworn, or if he was just being a sleepy teenage boy, she didn't ask him for more details.
And,
she thought,
he has reason enough to be upset
.
With breakfast done, the two boys headed out the front door to walk to school, while Fiona stumbled into her mother's car. The two groups set off for the same place. As Trevor and Marvin walked beside one another, Trevor watched the sidewalk with the intent glare of someone regretting something they had done. A woman, watching him, might find sympathy if she had spent the night drunkenly with someone she regretted seeing. Marvin, meanwhile, had his hands in his pockets and walked as if he was about to step on a land mine every step of the way.
"So," Marvin said.
"Shut up," Trevor said.
Marvin shut up.
After a few more steps, Trevor sighed. "Y-Yeah, she's fucking gorgeous."
Marvin nodded slowly.
"I don't know what to do, bro," Trevor said, quietly. "I don't want to break up with Kelly -- I love her -- but..." he shook his head, then gestured vaugely in the air, his hands sketching shapes that could have been anything from whales to atomic bombs. But both boys -- with the uncanny focus of their age -- knew exactly what he was referring too.
Marvin rubbed his snout. "Real talk?" he asked. "I kinda want Fiona. You know. Like." His nares blushed dark red. "A lot?"
"Yeah," Trevor said, quietly.
"So, like, you don't need to break up with anyone if I'm laying pipe with her, you know?" Marvin said, grinning.
"Dude!" Trevor punched his shoulder.
"Hey, just saying what we're all thinking," Marvin said, rubbing his shoulder. "Not like I
just
want to, you know, show her the delights of riding the Nile canoe. The joy of licking some Galapagos gonads. Getting some tail."
Trevor punched Marvin in the shoulder three times in rapid succession. Marvin yelped every time, squirming and contorting himself under the assault.
"I'm serious!" Trevor said.
"To be, uh, fair..." Marvin rubbed his arm. "So am I."
He opened up his phone, then showed Trevor the picture of him laying on his back -- cock hard against his belly, cum drooling from the tip, puddles of it glistening on his chest, his belly, his eyes glowing with a come-hither look that made even Trevor feel uncomfortably tempted. Trevor gulped slowly, his eyes wide as saucers.
"D-Damn, bro," he whispered.
Marvin grinned. "Soooooo...this is on her phone."
"Holy
fuck
, what?" Trevor put his hands on Marvin's phone, shoving it down, his eyes wide as he looked at his brother. "You could go to
jail
for that if she-"
"She swam for us
naked
while we watched," Marvin whispered. "I think she's chill."
"B-But I didn't even sext Kelly!" Trevor stammered. Then, adding. "U-Until the third date."
Marvin narrowed his eyes, then grinned. "You never did it, huh?"
"Well, okay, no, but to be fair, she was right down the block," Trevor said, shaking his head. Marvin grinned, sliding up against his brother's side. He leaned close, whispering in his ear softly.
"You know, there's something
